The Broken Book by Fiona Farrell

I have been so moved by this book with its beautiful poetry and prose and the insight the author provides into the experiences of the residents of Christchurch over the past 12 months and also of course by way of contrast the great joy to be experienced on walking holidays........

Fiona Farrell, a special person And so much literary talent. I salute her.

To put it more formally she is of course is an award-winning novelist, playwright and poet. In 1995 she was the Katherine Mansfield Fellow in Menton and in 2006 she held the Rathcoola Residency in Ireland, where she wrote The Pop-Up Book of Invasions (Auckland University Press, 2007), shortlisted for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Fiona Farrell received the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction in 2007. Her most recent novels are Mr Allbones’ Ferrets (2007) and Limestone (2009), both nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Farrell lives at Otanerito on Banks Peninsula, but spent 2011 in Dunedin as recipient of the Robert Burns Fellowship. She was in Christchurch on 4 September 2010 and at Dunsandel, driving south, on 22 February 2011.


The publishers, Auckland University Press, have kindly allowed me to reproduce some text and two poems from the book:


I was writing a book about walking. A travel book, meandering, following the random habit of thought associated with a walk through a landscape. It would ramble. It would detour to examine curiosities. It would link walking with books read along the way or the things learned in conversation with strangers. I didn’t have a shape for what I was doing. Normally I write to a more regular structure, but this time I was heading offroad, following my nose, seeing where it would take me. Then an earthquake shook me from bed and ripped up the map entirely. The quake sent a jagged tear right through my text. My mind was shaken.

The suitcase

When we leave, we take the city

with us. Her bandaged buildings

and her gappy streets lurching

like some old gal who has been

knocked about. Her broken teeth,

black eye. Her shops with their

empty shelves. Her sewers and

their secret, soggy shambles.

We run away from her. Cross

over to the safe side where the

centre holds. Pretty cities

where marigolds will live

for ever. We breathe the scent

of white sheets in a quiet hotel.

But when the suitcase opens,

it’s all there: bricks, the lost

dog, the old gal wheezing her

crazed song down a broken

alley. Something about dust

and ashes and how things

fall. We catch the whiff of

her among our folded socks.

Lipstick

Marge ran out in her

pyjamas. But that’s no

way to end: crumpled

in faded pastel,

barefoot, pinned to

the earth by the

clothesline’s scrawny

cuddle.

She climbs back into

the shaky dark, finds

her fluffy jersey, the

one everyone says

brings out the blue

in her eyes. Her fine

wool trousers.

Italian leather shoes.

And lipstick.

A dash of crimson.

Thick enough to leave

its mark on any saviour,

should one come

knocking,

kissing her

awake,

in her tomb of

shattered glass.

This is a very special book which I warmly recommend to you. Lyricism of the highest order. And such a blend of emotion and intellect, she doesn't settle for the merely sentimental.
Auckland University Press - $34.99. Publication Friday 14 October.